Chile Forum

Hello Everyone,

We have a small monastery and international online esoteric school community, very interested in sustainable agriculture, vegetable gardening, dairy and grain farming. We have been looking around Central and South America for a place to settle down, and have come to regard southern Chile as one of the best locations for many reasons. Now we're about to go to the Villarrica region, rent a cottage to serve as HQ for our site search while we look around the area for a rental.

We want to have a 5-6 BR house, 10-20 hectares of arable land and agricultural zoning so we can farm and raise animals. Later on we will want to buy some property. The more we hear about Pucón area, the less attractive it seems—not only because of the tourism nonsense but also the volcanism. On the other hand, we want to have a local source of water and good soil. Any pointers or advice you can send our way would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

First, welcome to the forum.

Sorry, had to clip your signature. You need at least 25 real post to post a link in your signature. forum Spam rules.

Well, of course the link in my sig is not spam; we want readers to see that we are an authentic esoteric school from a real ancient tradition, not just New Age fluff or some kind of fanatic cult. You can also find our site by Googling my name. Generally we have found that people in Chile have lots of respect for our lifestyle, and this has helped us find places and maintain very good relations with our neighbors and landlords.

I think the point is just that the site admin has adopted a blanket 25-post policy rather than having to figure out which posts are authentic, one by one. Otherwise spam can be hard to keep up with; spammers sometimes seem to write (or copy from elsewhere) credible-sounding comments just to draw clicks to some dubious link.

Chile seems a pretty good spot for space and self sufficiency.

James.

No, problem. Just you need to contribute to the forum a bit first. Most spammers, especially automagic spammers will not hang around to do 25 real posts. It is a more getting to know our members policy. Typically by 25 posts we have fairly good idea if you even know where Chile is located. We have had spammers go as far as about 5-10 fake posts, but never as far as 25 posts before they are caught.

Hi, you won't have a problem renting something in Villarrica to base yourself from March to early November..there is ample to choose from. The land between villarrica and pucon is quite highly priced due to the tourism factor but if you head out a few klm from Villarrica either towards Lican Ray, Loncoche or even Temuco there are larger plots available and the further out you go the cheaper the prices. It often comes down to asking as we have been doing the last few weeks. The real estate agents here are well...sadly not very useful. But a car and patience and the ability to ask around we are finding is bringing up lots of choices. Now that high season is over it is quiet and easy to get around Villarrica and the surrounds and look. I have seen a few sites with signs up for 10k hectares. One on the road to Pucon about 6 kms out of Villarrica I think that runs down to the lake but it is pricey. If you don't need a view of the lake or volcano then you will save a lot of mony.

@Charles: We not only know where Chile is; we live here! We also did extensive research on the economic and political situation before coming here. We know why we're here, and we intend to stay. We also have a big online forum, and the way we keep it spam-free is by nurturing good-quality conversations. We also use different forum software; PHPBB is notorious for being easily hackable.

@Mardy: No, we don't need lake or volcano view; we want to be on or near a road that has bus service to town for shopping, but we mainly want a place that is agriculturally zoned so we can put in a big garden and maybe keep a couple of cows. We definitely do not want to be anywhere near the summer party zone. What about up into the hills behind Pucón to the northeast?

yea, I have a bunch of other technical reasons for preferring PHPBB, even though there are likly many better forum software packages out there. I am fully aware of the limitations of phpBB, and have planned accordingly for it.

As for PUCON, you can search the forum for my views on it. I really really do not like the area. There are million better locations in the South of Chile, even in the 9th region. Pucon would be likly one of the last places I would ever recommend for a foreigner to buy or invest in, and so far I have yet to have a single client choose it once they get to know it a little.

Agricultural property, even in a relatively urbanized area in the south should not be much of problem to come by for what you want to do. You would have to go fairly far out not to have any sort of bus service. It might get complicated say if you went south of PM, but north of PM even most very remote and rural places have a bus that goes by once or twice a day. If there is any pavement even remotely close, then buses can be as frequent as every 10 to 15 mins.

In the 9th region, you might look slightly north or south of lake villarrica. The 7 lakes area is nice.

If you are willing to go more south, you might have a look at Puerto Varas.

davidbrucehughes wrote:... a 5-6 BR house, 10-20 hectares of arable land and agricultural zoning so we can farm and raise animals ... we want to have a local source of water and good soil. Any pointers or advice you can send our way would be appreciated ...

Why the 9th region?

Are you considering the other regions of Chile for your farming/self-sufficient community?

If not, have you visited some of them, at least?

How long have you (and your students) been staying in Chile already?

How many of you are coming to a rural area to form such a community?

RuneTheChookcha wrote:Why the 9th region?
Are you considering the other regions of Chile for your farming/self-sufficient community?
If not, have you visited some of them, at least?
How long have you (and your students) been staying in Chile already?
How many of you are coming to a rural area to form such a community?

We are pretty good at doing research, since we know what we want. The trick is finding an area where the right climate, soil, water, social and economic conditions occur together. We've been here long enough and seen enough to know that we want to stay, and studied the visa process enough to know that we can make it work.

The area between Valdivia and Lago Ranco and Futrono is full of dairy land and farms. most of the villages have regular service into Valdivia for major shopping or into Futrono or one of the other towns nearby for daily needs. Lago Ranco has not been discovered by the hordes of tourists and the surrounding countryside is truly lovely. This is the area mentioned on another thread where 125 New Zealand dairy farming families have come to settle.

WOW if that many New Zealander's have moved here, I'm left wondering who's left running New Zealand. Still waiting for that great NZ cheese to arrive..